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Associations between medical student empathy and personality: a multi-institutional study
Patrício Costa1, Raquel Alves2, Isabel Neto3
1School of Health Sciences, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal.
Plos One
|March 19, 2014
Summary
Medical student empathy is linked to personality traits like Agreeableness and Openness to experience. Understanding these personality factors can help medical schools foster greater physician empathy and improve patient care.
Area of Science:
- Medical Education
- Psychology
- Healthcare Research
Background:
- Physician empathy positively influences patient satisfaction, treatment adherence, and health outcomes.
- Understanding the role of personality in the development of empathy among medical students is crucial for medical education.
- Existing single-institution studies suggest a link between student personality and empathy levels.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the association between personality traits and empathy levels in medical students across multiple institutions.
- To identify personality differences between medical students with high and low empathy.
- To assess the predictive value of personality dimensions on physician empathy.
Main Methods:
- A multi-institutional study involving 472 medical students from three Portuguese universities.
- Participants completed the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) and the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSPE-spv).
- Students were categorized into high (Top) and low (Bottom) empathy groups based on JSPE-spv scores; correlation, logistic regression, and ROC analyses were performed.
Main Results:
- Personality dimensions significantly improved the prediction of empathy levels, increasing model predictive power from 6.4% to 16.8%.
- Agreeableness and Openness to experience were key personality traits predicting high or low empathy scores, even after accounting for gender, age, and university.
- The final model, including personality, correctly classified 69.3% of students into high or low empathy groups.
Conclusions:
- Personality traits, specifically Agreeableness and Openness to experience, are significantly associated with medical student empathy across institutions.
- Personality plays a substantial role in identifying students with higher empathy.
- Medical schools should consider student personality profiles to develop targeted strategies for enhancing physician empathy.
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